Much as yelling fire in an empty theater is harmless, publishing a game that no one plays is harmless. The harm comes when you successfully complete the communication, causing the person you communicated to to take some action that they would otherwise not take, and resulting in harm.
Yell fire, people in theater hear fire, people panic and hurt each other, harm.
Publish a violent video game, people play the game, people hurt each other, harm.
It might be the case that if you play violent video games, you become more likely to commit a violent act, thus posing a public health risk. We put restrictions on the sale of other substances that pose a public health risk, such as tobacco. Of course I think we can all agree that video games do not rob us of all free will, but the question is whether or not the risk is sufficiently high that our society needs to act to protect itself.
The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is analogous not to your playing games, but to the game developers publishing of games. If their publishing of games causes people to run outside and shoot each other, the harm is highly comparable to people running for the doors and crushing each other.
It's an STD that can cause an infection involving an up to 9 pound parasitical life form growing inside you, threatening your life in multiple ways. I don't know where you set the bar for disease but it must be awfully high not to include that!
It certainly is debateable whether or not any restrictions on free speech are acceptable. But so long as our court systems continue to hold that restrictions on speech such as inciting violence against individuals, or advertising tobacco products are reasonable, it will be at least equally reasonable to consider restrictions on video games, if it is established that they cause a similar level of harm.
Feel free to read it again also. My whole point was that research could easily prove that video games could be "likely to incite imminent lawless action" ala the decision in the overturned case. That's the basis on which the 'fire in a crowded theater' restriction is based: yelling fire could cause a lawless riot causing immediate harm to the people in the theater.
The APA is the American Psychological Association. Basically it's a scientific organization of psychologists worldwide. The DSM is a collaborative effort. While the DSM is not immune to political influence, the process is reasonably well designed to try to keep the DSM as scientific as possible. As one example, in spite of intense political pressure, when research proved that homosexuality was not a disease, it was successfully removed from the DSM (it was included as such in an early edition due to widespread assumption that had not yet been researched).
Here is the dsm-v website, which describes the research going into the next DSM. http://www.dsm5.org/
From http://www.apa.org/about/ With 150,000 members, APA is the largest association of psychologists worldwide.
Gerald P. Koocher, PhD is the 2006 President of the American Psychological Association. He currently serves as editor of the journal Ethics and Behavior.
Dr. Koocher was elected a Fellow of twelve divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Koocher has more than 25 years of APA governance experience--spanning from his service on APA's Ethics Committee as a 25-year-old to his completion in December of two five-year terms as APA treasurer, an office that includes membership on APA's Board of Directors. He has been president of the Massachusetts and New England Psychological Associations.
Yeesh, no kidding. It's getting so hard to tell the parties apart these days that I like to tell people 'I'm voting for the party that will screw me over after they're elected'.
There are actually close to no laws enforcing the games rating system. In pretty much every state that tried to make a law enforcing the ratings system, the laws have been overturned. And most states haven't even tried to make such laws. The ratings system is pretty much all voluntary.
The movie rating system is not from the government. http://www.filmratings.com/ Read the questions and answers. It's a voluntary system that movie theaters have adopted to prevent the possibility of government censorship. Unrated movies can be and are filmed, distributed, and shown in movie theaters across the country.
Imagine if subliminal advertising worked. Would you support coca cola having the right to brainwash you with television commercials that forced you to buy their product against your will?
Now imagine that it is proven that violent games cause physiological brain changes that predispose you to acts of violence.
DSM-IV diagnosed mental disorders are considered diseases, and are considered appropriate research areas for CDC grants. The theory here is that games may be a cause of DSM-IV diseases, and so should be researched further by the CDC. It's much like child abuse, the CDC funds tons of research on that, but it's not like you catch some virus and start hitting your kids. It's about what is good for the public health, and the health and functioning of our society as a whole.
Clearly, this sort of study is all about finding out just what might be causing such serious harm that it is worthy of societal intervention. It used to be that we said physical discipline was a parent's right. Now we have numerous scientific studies that say that kids who are beaten so hard they wind up in the hospital have serious, society draining problems for the rest of their lives, so we have decided the line is somewhere before that position, and everybody who works with kids are now mandated reporters of child abuse. Likewise sexual and emotional abuse. When mandated reporters notice signs of these problems, they notify the authorities, and the authorities attempt to determine what corrective action needs to be taken. It will be the same thing with games. If games are proven to be causing significant long term harm to our society, laws will be established to force parents to handle the issue appropriately with their children.
The magical difference is in hours of exposure. Most TV programs last 1/2 or one hour, most movies 1.5 or 2. Most games > 8. That's a lot of repetitive training for the brain. Games are also interactive, while TV/movies are passive. I would absolutely expect serious differences between the impact of games and tv/movies. Why wouldn't you?
The point was not that the ratings system worked for parents and families, but that they worked for the tv and movie industries to help keep censors off their backs. Obviously kids will still get exposed to the same stuff, by sneaking into movies, poor ratings, etc. The games industry needs to emphasize their ratings system to the public, and convince walmart not to sell AO titles to kids, and their problem with censors should be solved.
Bad form to reply to myself, but I forgot to point out that much of this negotiation is a two way street based on trust. However, the need for that trust can be eliminated by contract terms with ease:
First of all, you're pulling up roots, moving across the country. What happens to you if the company lays you off the day after? You're trusting the company not to do this, but what if they get in dire financial straits and effectively have no choice? Are you sure their CFO isn't one of the apparently many cooking the books, and that the Enron style collapse isn't coming tomorrow?
That's why you want some terms in the move that will help to protect you. This is typically handled by having the company give you gobs of value up front, so that it isn't possible for them to screw you in this way. Thus you get 1,2,4 in my list above.
Now the company has to worry: what if you take their moving money, and immediately quit to work for someone else in the destination area (no doubt your evil plan all along)?
The company protects itself by getting you to agree that in exchange for 1,2,4, you'll take 3 (salary adjustment) and agree to work for them for the next N (<5) years at that new salary level (or more... assuming everything goes right, you'll continue to receive raises, but you should make sure that you're willing to live with that salary without further adjustment for the length of the contract). In the event that you quit early, the company gets a depreciating percentage of their money back. (Usually you'll smoothly depreciate 2 and 4 over one year, and 1 over the full length of the contract.
This leaves both sides protected, and presumably happy with the move. If the company dies, or you just can't stand working there any more, the contract dissolves in a way fair to both sides.
You want the following in your move package: 1) Some portion of the price differential on an equivalent home in an equivalent neighborhood. You'd like 100%, but will probably have to settle for 50%, or less, depending on how desperate they are. 2) Home sale and purchase costs. You probably have to pay a realtor on both ends, and you want the company to pay for this. 3) Salary adjustment to the new area. 4) Moving costs paid with a minimum and a maximum. The minimum makes sure you don't get screwed out of the small costs if you are able to find a cheap way to move, the maximum tells you just what you can afford when you get your binding estimates from the movers. Aside: be sure your estimates are binding. Alternatively, you might also ask for a base relocation bonus (ie they give you $5000 as an immediate bonus for moving), plus moving costs covered to $X ($7500-$10,000 would not be unusual for a full cross country move for a software developer making >$60k). This would be better than the min/max since you can then try to push as much as possible into the moving costs by keeping your receipts carefully.
There's no bi-yearly upgrade cycle that everyone adheres to. Some people have upgraded, some haven't, and cpu sales cycles are actually quite smooth. Look at a graph of intel's or dells quarterly sales. Intel can bring out new tech whenever it wants, and if it is good, it will sell.
There's very little intel can do in its chip designs to make the desktop low latency. That's all about app and OS design. Intel is putting a lot of focus into getting their chips to run cool, and if people are really demanding the sort of PC you're describing then surely someone will build one out of the ULV chips intel is going to be supplying.
And on the other hand, I'm thinking about whether or not I can afford to get a dual-processor dual-core in my next box, so I'd love to see them move to quad-core, and so would everyone buying a workstation. Not as large as the home PC market, but not much worse than 10x smaller.
I've done both jobs. The producer job requires hard work but no brainpower. It's (a lot) of all very straightforward stuff. I fully grant that the job does need to be done though, my point was only to explain why they aren't paid as much.
Well, I definitely wouldn't claim that it is the way things should be, just that it is the way things are. If you come out with dated graphics, it's going to be harder to entice good reviews and sales.
Slashdot Mirror
Much as yelling fire in an empty theater is harmless, publishing a game that no one plays is harmless. The harm comes when you successfully complete the communication, causing the person you communicated to to take some action that they would otherwise not take, and resulting in harm.
Yell fire, people in theater hear fire, people panic and hurt each other, harm.
Publish a violent video game, people play the game, people hurt each other, harm.
Can I clarify it any further for you?
It might be the case that if you play violent video games, you become more likely to commit a violent act, thus posing a public health risk. We put restrictions on the sale of other substances that pose a public health risk, such as tobacco. Of course I think we can all agree that video games do not rob us of all free will, but the question is whether or not the risk is sufficiently high that our society needs to act to protect itself.
The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is analogous not to your playing games, but to the game developers publishing of games. If their publishing of games causes people to run outside and shoot each other, the harm is highly comparable to people running for the doors and crushing each other.
It's an STD that can cause an infection involving an up to 9 pound parasitical life form growing inside you, threatening your life in multiple ways. I don't know where you set the bar for disease but it must be awfully high not to include that!
It certainly is debateable whether or not any restrictions on free speech are acceptable. But so long as our court systems continue to hold that restrictions on speech such as inciting violence against individuals, or advertising tobacco products are reasonable, it will be at least equally reasonable to consider restrictions on video games, if it is established that they cause a similar level of harm.
Just pray you don't wind up in the control group.
Feel free to read it again also. My whole point was that research could easily prove that video games could be "likely to incite imminent lawless action" ala the decision in the overturned case. That's the basis on which the 'fire in a crowded theater' restriction is based: yelling fire could cause a lawless riot causing immediate harm to the people in the theater.
Yeesh. Learn to read.
The APA is the American Psychological Association. Basically it's a scientific organization of psychologists worldwide. The DSM is a collaborative effort. While the DSM is not immune to political influence, the process is reasonably well designed to try to keep the DSM as scientific as possible. As one example, in spite of intense political pressure, when research proved that homosexuality was not a disease, it was successfully removed from the DSM (it was included as such in an early edition due to widespread assumption that had not yet been researched).
Here is the APA's website:
http://www.apa.org/
Here is the dsm-v website, which describes the research going into the next DSM.
http://www.dsm5.org/
From http://www.apa.org/about/
With 150,000 members, APA is the largest association of psychologists worldwide.
Gerald P. Koocher, PhD is the 2006 President of the American Psychological Association. He currently serves as editor of the journal Ethics and Behavior.
Dr. Koocher was elected a Fellow of twelve divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Koocher has more than 25 years of APA governance experience--spanning from his service on APA's Ethics Committee as a 25-year-old to his completion in December of two five-year terms as APA treasurer, an office that includes membership on APA's Board of Directors. He has been president of the Massachusetts and New England Psychological Associations.
Yeesh, no kidding. It's getting so hard to tell the parties apart these days that I like to tell people 'I'm voting for the party that will screw me over after they're elected'.
That way, I can vote for either party.
There are actually close to no laws enforcing the games rating system. In pretty much every state that tried to make a law enforcing the ratings system, the laws have been overturned. And most states haven't even tried to make such laws. The ratings system is pretty much all voluntary.
The movie rating system is not from the government.
http://www.filmratings.com/
Read the questions and answers. It's a voluntary system that movie theaters have adopted to prevent the possibility of government censorship. Unrated movies can be and are filmed, distributed, and shown in movie theaters across the country.
Of course it matters if there is harm. That's why you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theater:r owded_theater
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_c
Imagine if subliminal advertising worked. Would you support coca cola having the right to brainwash you with television commercials that forced you to buy their product against your will?
Now imagine that it is proven that violent games cause physiological brain changes that predispose you to acts of violence.
DSM-IV diagnosed mental disorders are considered diseases, and are considered appropriate research areas for CDC grants. The theory here is that games may be a cause of DSM-IV diseases, and so should be researched further by the CDC. It's much like child abuse, the CDC funds tons of research on that, but it's not like you catch some virus and start hitting your kids. It's about what is good for the public health, and the health and functioning of our society as a whole.
Clearly, this sort of study is all about finding out just what might be causing such serious harm that it is worthy of societal intervention. It used to be that we said physical discipline was a parent's right. Now we have numerous scientific studies that say that kids who are beaten so hard they wind up in the hospital have serious, society draining problems for the rest of their lives, so we have decided the line is somewhere before that position, and everybody who works with kids are now mandated reporters of child abuse. Likewise sexual and emotional abuse. When mandated reporters notice signs of these problems, they notify the authorities, and the authorities attempt to determine what corrective action needs to be taken. It will be the same thing with games. If games are proven to be causing significant long term harm to our society, laws will be established to force parents to handle the issue appropriately with their children.
The magical difference is in hours of exposure. Most TV programs last 1/2 or one hour, most movies 1.5 or 2. Most games > 8. That's a lot of repetitive training for the brain. Games are also interactive, while TV/movies are passive. I would absolutely expect serious differences between the impact of games and tv/movies. Why wouldn't you?
The point was not that the ratings system worked for parents and families, but that they worked for the tv and movie industries to help keep censors off their backs. Obviously kids will still get exposed to the same stuff, by sneaking into movies, poor ratings, etc. The games industry needs to emphasize their ratings system to the public, and convince walmart not to sell AO titles to kids, and their problem with censors should be solved.
Buuuuuutttt Daaaaaad, everyone is getting rna brain parasites!
Just in case anyone out there wants to non-breed themselves out of the gene pool, but is in fact allergic to latex:
r ds!106&keyword=(sheepskin+condoms)&match_type=
http://www.condom.com/naturalamb.html?engine=adwo
Mmmmmmm, fresh baked mozeralla stuffed mouse!
Bad form to reply to myself, but I forgot to point out that much of this negotiation is a two way street based on trust. However, the need for that trust can be eliminated by contract terms with ease:
... assuming everything goes right, you'll continue to receive raises, but you should make sure that you're willing to live with that salary without further adjustment for the length of the contract). In the event that you quit early, the company gets a depreciating percentage of their money back. (Usually you'll smoothly depreciate 2 and 4 over one year, and 1 over the full length of the contract.
First of all, you're pulling up roots, moving across the country. What happens to you if the company lays you off the day after? You're trusting the company not to do this, but what if they get in dire financial straits and effectively have no choice? Are you sure their CFO isn't one of the apparently many cooking the books, and that the Enron style collapse isn't coming tomorrow?
That's why you want some terms in the move that will help to protect you. This is typically handled by having the company give you gobs of value up front, so that it isn't possible for them to screw you in this way. Thus you get 1,2,4 in my list above.
Now the company has to worry: what if you take their moving money, and immediately quit to work for someone else in the destination area (no doubt your evil plan all along)?
The company protects itself by getting you to agree that in exchange for 1,2,4, you'll take 3 (salary adjustment) and agree to work for them for the next N (<5) years at that new salary level (or more
This leaves both sides protected, and presumably happy with the move. If the company dies, or you just can't stand working there any more, the contract dissolves in a way fair to both sides.
You want the following in your move package:
1) Some portion of the price differential on an equivalent home in an equivalent neighborhood. You'd like 100%, but will probably have to settle for 50%, or less, depending on how desperate they are.
2) Home sale and purchase costs. You probably have to pay a realtor on both ends, and you want the company to pay for this.
3) Salary adjustment to the new area.
4) Moving costs paid with a minimum and a maximum. The minimum makes sure you don't get screwed out of the small costs if you are able to find a cheap way to move, the maximum tells you just what you can afford when you get your binding estimates from the movers. Aside: be sure your estimates are binding. Alternatively, you might also ask for a base relocation bonus (ie they give you $5000 as an immediate bonus for moving), plus moving costs covered to $X ($7500-$10,000 would not be unusual for a full cross country move for a software developer making >$60k). This would be better than the min/max since you can then try to push as much as possible into the moving costs by keeping your receipts carefully.
There's no bi-yearly upgrade cycle that everyone adheres to. Some people have upgraded, some haven't, and cpu sales cycles are actually quite smooth. Look at a graph of intel's or dells quarterly sales. Intel can bring out new tech whenever it wants, and if it is good, it will sell.
p ?artsec=17&issue=20060216
s p?Country=USA&Symbol=INTC&stocktab=finance&pgid=qt qnnavfinstate
http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.as
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Income10.a
There's very little intel can do in its chip designs to make the desktop low latency. That's all about app and OS design. Intel is putting a lot of focus into getting their chips to run cool, and if people are really demanding the sort of PC you're describing then surely someone will build one out of the ULV chips intel is going to be supplying.
And on the other hand, I'm thinking about whether or not I can afford to get a dual-processor dual-core in my next box, so I'd love to see them move to quad-core, and so would everyone buying a workstation. Not as large as the home PC market, but not much worse than 10x smaller.
I've done both jobs. The producer job requires hard work but no brainpower. It's (a lot) of all very straightforward stuff. I fully grant that the job does need to be done though, my point was only to explain why they aren't paid as much.
That's the solution they've been trying in Alabama, but people keep repairing the churches and putting out the fires.
Well, I definitely wouldn't claim that it is the way things should be, just that it is the way things are. If you come out with dated graphics, it's going to be harder to entice good reviews and sales.